Reports are coming in from the National Prayer Breakfast, where Sec. of State Hillary Clinton is addressing The Family’s large crowd of conservative political power players. And it’s there, citing Scripture, she’s telling the audience the Obama administration stands for human rights everywhere, specifically mentioning Uganda. She’s followed by President Obama, who also mentions Uganda, and says that while Americans may disagree about gay marriage, “odious laws that are being proposed, most recently in Uganda” should be condemned by everyone.

Meanwhile, over at the multi-city counter-event, the National Prayer Hour, the Rev. Stephen Sprinkle says, “We will do everything in our power to stop the anti-gay bill in Uganda.”

This follows the move by a gay Ugandan man, calling himself Moses, who showed up at National Prayer Hour press conference Tuesday wearing a paper bag over his head — to illustrate just how important it is for him to remain anonymous as he returns to a country where newspapers (like Red Pepper, which he held up to reporters) print the names and addresses of suspected gays. (See video.)

And it also follows a call from the Episcopal Rev. V. Gene Robinson for Obama to use today’s prayer event to highlight Uganda’s plight.

By our count, this marks Obama’s first public statement about Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill. And it’s “barely” that — given the National Prayer Breakfast is actually closed to the press, aside from the traveling press pool that accompanies him most everywhere. Of course, statements from events like these always leak out; Twitter helps move things along. (CSPAN carried coverage of the event live; previous reports about the Breakfast indicated only the press pool would be allowed inside.) And while an event organized by The Family, with its ties to Uganda’s anti-gay faith leaders and politicians who are drumming up support for the bill, is the perfect place for Obama to deliver a message about the proposed law, it should not be the only place he does it.

58 Comments

I wish that the News Outlets would be honest about this Prayer breakfast. They are calling it non-partisan. Um, when the group sponsoring it is pushing for laws aimed at killing gays I would hardly call this a prayer group sponsored by a benign organization.

Hey, during the campaign he spoke in front of black churches and said gay positive things. Then during the first year of his presidency, not only is there no movement but the White house pressures Alcey Hastings to pull his bill taht was a pro gay rights bill even though it already had over 100 sponsors, he mocks gay rights supporters outside a political event etc… so you’ll have to excuse somepeople if we don’t jump for joy merely because a politician has deigned to say the word “Gay” in public.

Excuse me people. Why don’t you leave Obama alone, or maybe you all would like to go back to the dark ages when President’s didn’t give a shit (about gay people). Ever heard of baby steps? Everybody wants a giant leap!!! There is alot of political spin doctoring that goes on in Washington to get things moving. Just take a chill pill, which I may also add is a favorite of americans (also look for a quick fix). PEACELUVNBWILDYALL!

@Devon: Yeah, let’s force that entire nation to suffer because of the whims of the elite. The people who constructed and pushed the bill wouldn’t even be hurt if such a threat was carried out.

The way to fight homophobia is through economic development that lifts people from poverty and enlightens them with a strong educational system. You need to starve ignorance, not people. I’m grateful we have a president and Secretary of State who understand that and wouldn’t give serious consideration to your hamfisted idea.

@Devon: You are correct! He should start wearing his PRIDE shirt and colors NOW. In fact, why worry about the thousands of americans out of work and focus on a gay agenda. If you want a “FIERCE” advocate, become one! The fight starts with 1. PEACE.

No. 10 · The Artist
Excuse me people. Why don’t you leave Obama alone, or maybe you all would like to go back to the dark ages when President’s didn’t give a shit (about gay people).
___________________________

Which dark ages were those? The dark ages when presidents said they didn’t believe in gay marriage? The dark ages when presidents would stop Congressmen from introducing bills supporting gay rights? Give it a rest. People made a big deal saying Clinton was such a good friend of ours because during his last term he mentioned gay pride month. I think we would expect to have moved beyond getting excited over purely symbolic gestures. Saying that you “Feel My Pain” does me no good when it’s still legal to fire my ass for who I am.

@Cam: Wow! Such great debate over our most brilliant President! I don’t believe for a minute that either Clinton or Obama don’t want equal rights for all people. It is written in the constitution. It is time to redirect the energy of lashing out, into something a bit more positive for everyone. The dark ages was a time when no one is having a conversation about gay issues. It’s time for a new direction, so a steady pace always wins the race, not a whirling hurricane. PEACELUVNBWILD!

Why no stop-loss order?? How many more troops are being sent to Afghanistan?
And now his approval rating has slipped below 50% so any political capital he had say 6 months ago is down the drain unless god forbid there’s another huge terrorist attack here and the country rallies behind him. So yeah, that opportunity has passed.

Something needed to be said. And something needed to be said IN THIS SETTING. The President and Sec’y of State did it. I am happy for now. Not saying I’m voting Obama in 2012 (or Clinton), but it needed to be said and he said it.

No. 16 · The Artist said….
@Cam: Wow! Such great debate over our most brilliant President! I don’t believe for a minute that either Clinton or Obama don’t want equal rights for all people.
_______________________

What you think they believe is irrelevent. Clinto was supposedly our ally, yet do you see the irony right now that one of our biggest gay rights fights is to undo the legislation that he put into place? We’re not mind readers and I’d rather have somebody that doesn’t like me but believes in equality over somebody that thinks I’m just the greatest thing ever but won’t lift a finger to help. Once again, when action comes, then I will be excited, but more words being spoken is irrelevent.

So I guess we are just supposed to look the other way when Obama’s DOJ compares gays and lesbians to incest and pedophilia in the Supreme Court defense of DOMA.
Or when Obama refuses to follow a federal judges order that the government extend medical insurance benefits to same sex partners, forcing Lamda to sue.
Obama’s actions speak far louder than his words.

and DR yes I believe it was the appropriate venue for mentioning this but unfortunately most of Americans are still in the dark about this. And the U.S. is walking a fine line with Uganda because I’m sure Iran and China are more than happy to fill the economic void made by any american withdrawal of financial support.

In the 1930s, the NAACP could not even corral enough support to get federal anti-lynching legislation passed. After Pres. Truman ordered the military integrated 1948, it still took several years to fully integrate the armed forces. After the Brown decision, schools were still segregated almost a decade later. After the Civil Rights Acts were passed, there was still discrimination in public accommodations and barriers to voting years after.

There is a certain ahistorical element in the gay rights community or a reckless (or perhaps willful) misreading of history that blacks who fought for civil rights got everything they wanted posthaste and with the waving of a magic wand. History tells us otherwise.

There needs to be a realization that this is long game any laying the groundwork is as important end goal.

Let’s not even mention the fact that it took 20 years of court cases of school desegregation to even get to the Brown decision (and most of those school desegregation cases prior to the Brown were located in the North)…

and let’s not even mention how schools are still largely segregated according to race.

Many white gays show an astounding ignorance for the black civil rights movement.

@edgyguy1426: I completely agree with you. I’m simply saying he isn’t a gay president elected solely to work on gay rights. There is a big country out there with big issues and while I agree he needs to do more, and his feet need held to the fire…there is a lot more on his plate than just our piece of the pie. That’s all.

and let’s not even mention how schools are still largely segregated according to race.

Many white gays show an astounding ignorance for the black civil rights movement.
__________________________

The schools that are racially segregated now are not that way because of force, laws, or any govt. policies. They are that way because of neighborhoods. If a school in East L.A. is 90% hispanic should the govt. go in and say “Sorry, we have to bus black and white kids in from outside the neighborhood because your school is too hispanic. They tried that in Boston and all it gave you was a bunch of kids who were tired after riding the bus for 2 hours each way to go to school.
__________________________-

No. 27 · Same Crap said…
@robert:

In the 1930s, the NAACP could not even corral enough support to get federal anti-lynching legislation passed.
_________________________________

Where do you get your information???

President Ulysses S. Grant and Congress passed the Force Acts of 1870 and the Civil Rights Act of 1871, also known as the Ku Klux Klan Act, because it was passed to suppress the vigilante violence of the Klan. This enabled federal prosecution of crimes committed by groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, as well as use of federal troops to control violence. The administration began holding grand juries and prosecuting Klan members. In addition, it used martial law in some counties in South Carolina, where the Klan was the strongest. Under attack, the Klan dissipated. Vigorous federal action and the disappearance of the Klan had a strong effect in reducing the numbers of murders.

Since U.S. conservative Christians have contributed to Uganda’s anti-gay bill ( http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/04/world/africa/04uganda.html ) and were taken seriously in Uganda because of their religious affiliations, getting U.S. religious types to say the bill is a very bad idea would seem to be an effective tactic.

“The election of Franklin Roosevelt in 1932 gave the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) hope that lynching would end. These hopes proved false. Pressure from his wife, Eleanor Roosevelt, failed to convince the president to act and, in 1935, Roosevelt did not support the Costigan-Wagner Anti-Lynching Bill that would have punished sheriffs who failed to protect their prisoners from lynch mobs. Roosevelt feared white voters in the South would reject him and cost him the election of 1936. Even the lynching of Rubin Stacy in 1935 failed to change Roosevelt’s mind. Stacy was lynched while six deputies were escorting him to a jail in Miami, Florida. He was taken from police protection by a white mob and hanged. The national attention the incident drew did not sway Roosevelt.”

As far as school desegregation in the North was concerned, that was a tough battle because the overwhelming majority of blacks did not then make enough money to move into the ‘burbs. And even the blacks that were able to move in the burbs often lived in racially segregated areas and were subjected to violence. reference where all the race riots in the 40’s and even the major race riots in the 1960’s were.

Most of them occured in places that had no official Jim Crow on the books.

@Cam: ChitownKev was right. You don’t know civil rights history. The end of Reconstruction made is so that vigilante violence against blacks in the South resumed largely unabated. The rebirth of the Klan in the 1910s engendered even more horrific violence against blacks into the 1920s and 30s. That’s what the NAACP pushed for stronger anti-lynching legislation during FDR’s term as post #34 mentions.

And read up on “Massive Resistance” after Brown. There were whites who would shut down public schools even if it meant white children would be denied an education so that could defy desegregation orders.

@robert: Ummmm…. the Black Civil Rights era was baby steps. And Dr. King and Mr. X was part of the stairway toward African-American decent. Without their long struggle, there would be no Obama. Let’s put this into perspective here. Don’t just start with the only two you know, think of the stuggle in its entire picture. Ever heard of Middle Passage? No. Then look it up or just watch the movie. Get Educated! PEACELUVNBWILD!

No. 36 · Same Crap
@Cam: ChitownKev was right. You don’t know civil rights history. The end of Reconstruction made is so that vigilante violence against blacks in the South resumed largely unabated. The rebirth of the Klan in the 1910s engendered even more horrific violence against blacks into the 1920s and 30s. That’s what the NAACP pushed for stronger anti-lynching legislation during FDR’s term as post #34 mentions.

Just read, please.
______________________________

You are advocating baby steps because there was a time when anti-lynching laws weren’t passed. I was pointing out that similar laws had been passed SIXTY years earlier to combat Klan violence.

@Cam: I am not advocating anything. I am saying that when some gays claim blacks attained full civil and political rights with the click of two fingers and with the support of a compliant and accepting public, they are woefully misinformed and carelessly misreading history. Civil rights attained through the courts, through legislatures, through mass movements and through changes in public opinion took several decades. And it’s still an ongoing process.

Civil rights are not GAINED through hard work, knowing history and fighting; what is gaine is the RECOGNITION of one’s civil rights. The civil rights themselves are inalienable and always exist for each person from birth whether the larger society recognizes them or not. All people are created equal — no matter what. And the Constitution guarantees equal protection of the laws as the legal expression of this principle.

Civil rights are not earned, and one civil rights struggle does not equate with another. The route to recognition may be fast (if you are a white male it is recognized with a slap on the fanny), or very slow, as in the case of blacks.

But it does not HAVE to be slow, and we should all hope that they come fast for gay people. But make no mistake, the rights themselves are equal. The recognition of blacks right to marry is the exact same right — to marry — as gays are fighting for. Don’t confuse the route with the right.

No. 43 · Chitown Kev wrote, “What all this has to do with the National Prayer Breakfast, I don’t know….” … while you seemed to be talking about discrimination in general, given how religious Ugandans are supposed to be, criticizing their anti-gay policies during a “National Prayer Breakfast” is likely to have more weight with the Ugandans and not seem like a case of the U.S. interfering in their internal affairs (which can generate a negative reaction that might increase the chances of anti-gay legislation being passed).

Actually, Shelley v. Kraemer was not only an important precedent to the Brown case but also to Loving V. Virginia

“The court rejected an argument that since state courts would enforce a restrictive covenant against white persons, judicial enforcement of restrictive covenants would not be a violation of the Equal Protection Clause. The court noted that the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed individual rights, and that equal protection of the law is not achieved with the imposition of inequalities.”

The argument about state courts being able to impose a restrictive coveanant against white people came up in the Loving case when the state of Virginia argued that the miscegnation law also applied to white people, that the law was not a violation of equal protection.

(By the way, Loving v. Virginia was NOT a ban on interracial marriage, it was a ban against whites intermarrying, really…blacks could marry someone of any other race but the white race under the Virginia statute of that time. It was because the law supported white supremacy that the Court struck it down.)

Restrictive covenants were used to keep even middle and upper middle classes out of white neighborhoods and all-white schools…an important fact to consider for what was to come with the Brown case.

I love all these opinions. When I read the now overruled opinion in Bowers v. Hardwick, I actually cried. I was so shocked that the United States would uphold discriminatory laws. Well, my faith was again restored in Romer v. Evans and Lawrence v. Texas. I am not ashamed to say, I cried again. These opinions are what this nation is all about. It is at the heart of my patriotism.

Obama claims to be a “fierce advocate” for LGBT Americans. He claims to be for ENDA and against Clinton’s DOMA and DADT. He signed the feel-good UN Declaration for GLBT rights. He made a few very minor appointments. And there were some medals and an unforgettable Easter egg hunt. And now he’s come out foursquare against anti-GLBT mass murder in Uganda. Oh, be still my heart in the face of such heroism.

But he’s not shy on deeds. His campaign began with antiGLBT bigot Donnie McClurkin and ended with antiLBGT bigot Rick Warren.

He continues the occupation of Iraq and he and Clinton do nothing, repeat nothing, to stop the mass murder of our GLBT brothers and sisters by US trained and armed police, jihadist militias and military forces.

He spars with the Democratic (sic) Congressional misleadership about who should take the lead in passing ENDA and repealing DOMA. As a rule that means the vultures are circling.

As it becomes clear that the AfPak war’s going to be a long drawn out affair with heavy causalities he’s calling for an end to DADT to get more cannon fodder. He and the Pentagon said nothing about the violence against GLBT servicemembers or their loss of benefits or imprisonment: the one and only thing on their minds is a fresh source of meat for the grinder.

He continued and enlarged the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives and out it under the control Joshua Dubois, an ordained Pentecostal bigot who task it is to use federal largesse to bribe pulpit pimps. He refuses to dismiss Leah Daughtry, an anti-choice, anti-LGBT ordained Pentecostal minister who runs the DNC. After attacking and dismissing Jeremiah Wright for his nationalist and progressive approach he appointed his own spirit advisors, two of which performed the same duty for GW Bush.

The Obama administration always defends Clinton’s DOMA against legal challenges saying that LGBT partnerships are akin to incest and pedophilia. He continues to stridently oppose same sex marriage and some GLBT ‘leaders’ agree with him to the extent that they oppose the fight to defend or extend SSM rights. They say that we can’t win on SSM, forgetting that it was Obama who torpedoed the fight against Prop 8 with “gawd’s in the mix”.

Compare his words and his deeds. Obama’s grade if F-. He’s a bigot because he opposes SSM and he’s our enemy.

You’ve nailed Obama. And anyone with a lick of sense, would realize, as you obviously do, that Obama is no friend of ours, much less the “fierce advocate” he claimed himself to be when he was on the campaign trail.

If he feels that we of the LGBT community are akin to incest and pedophilia (of yeah…and bestiality too), then we can feel pretty safe in saying that politicians are akin to prostitutes.

They don’t give a flying fuck about your gratification or satisfaction.

I had a knee replaced (during my reckless youth I spent a good deal of time on them) and am in rehab. The pain was way too distracting to write so I took a month or so off.

You’re right about Democrat and Republican politicians. They’re the world’s second oldest profession. However, unlike prostitutes, they do nothing even remotely productive. The only people less productive are priests, imams and the military brass.

What political sewer do all these Obots come from? Stonewall Democrats? HRC? The DNC (shudder)? And why are they afraid of using their real names?

Wow. I am so sorry to hear of the pain you had to endure while undergoing a knee replacement. Not having seen you online in quite awhile, I was fearful that something had, indeed, kept you from posting here. You were missed to be sure.

While I cannot even fathom the pain and discomfort of such a procedure, I do have a friend down in Tampa who had both knees replaced a couple of years ago and I got a glimmer of what it must be like. Due to his excessive weight, He spent a considerable amount of time in rehab but is as good as new now.

I hope you coming along well and that you will soon be back to your usual self and enjoying all of the activities that your bum knee must have kept you from enjoying. Wink. Wink.